As is known, electric terminals substantially comprise a connection portion for connection to an electric cable, and a contact portion which cooperates, in use, with a complementary contact element, e.g. another electric terminal or a printed circuit board.
Electric terminals are known featuring a so-called IDC (insulation displacement contact) connection portion, i.e. comprising a knife element defining two blades between which the cable is forced transversely to cut the insulating sheath and establish electrical contact with the inner conductor of the cable without having to strip off the end portion of the cable sheath as normally.
The blades must be sufficiently thin (i.e. sharp in the direction of the cable axis to ensure effective cutting of the sheath, and, once the sheath is cut and removed locally, the contact pressure of the blades on the cable conductor must be sufficient to ensure good electrical contact.
If the contact pressure is high and the blades relatively thin, however, the outer strands of the conductor may also be cut, thus reducing the useful section of the conductor.
On the other hand, if the contact pressure is low, contact resistance is undesirably high and inevitably increases even further in use, especially if the terminal is used in an environment subject to vibration and/or aggressive agents, such as automotive electric connectors.
With known terminals, it is extremely difficult to strike a satisfactory compromise between the conflicting requirements of preventing damage to the conductor and achieving good contact pressure, so that terminals of the above type are invariably unreliable and have so far been limited to fairly light-duty applications.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an electric terminal designed to eliminate the aforementioned drawbacks typically associated with known terminals.
According to the present invention, there is provided an electric terminal as claimed in claim 1.
A preferred, non-limiting embodiment of the present invention will be described by way of example with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: